Projects

Cities around the world are facing serious challenges, including growing populations, greater demands for services, strained infrastructure systems, legacies of obsolete economic activity, and tighter budgets and resources. At the same time, local leaders are making innovative investments in sustainable infrastructure projects that not only help save money and improve efficiency, but that also promote long-term economic growth, enhance environmental protection, and foster local job creation, especially for poor and underserved communities.

This section includes project examples from Rio de Janeiro and Philadelphia that demonstrate where cities can catalyze projects across sectors, scales, and geographies to generate local economic, environmental and health benefits for their citizens. The types of examples captured here reflect the integrated nature of sustainable projects, where measures to improve water efficiency can also save energy and enhance economic revitalization, and they cut across sectors, ranging from transportation, water, waste, and energy to information and communication technology. By highlighting the connections between projects and related policy and finance mechanisms, this section aims to make visible specific actions that cities around the world can take to meet their local infrastructure priorities.

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Featured Projects

Crowd-Sourcing Green Entrepreneurs

Rio de Janeiro's entrepreneurial culture is helping the City build a greener economy.

• Communities
• Public Outreach
• Funding

Big Green Block

The goal of the Big Green Block project was to transform the sites of the Shissler Recreation Center and the Kensington High School for the Creative and Performing Arts and the surrounding area into the biggest, greenest block in Philadelphia.

• Water
• Transportation Air Quality
• Energy Efficiency
• Communities

Gramacho Landfill Gas to Energy System

The Gramacho Landfill was receiving over 3 million metric tons of waste per year until 2012, producing at its peak 119 million Nm₃ methane (normal cubic meter CH₄) through decomposition within the landfill, which represents both a contribution to global climate change and a loss of a potential low-pollution energy source.

• Waste
• Communities
• Funding